Levallion's Heir.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 155, 1 July 1907, Page 6

Levallion's Heir.

By ADELAIDE STRUNG, Aoflier of "Above-All "Maagsr" " Wfeee Lore Bftwns," "A Sacrifice=to.l»e*ef' etc

CHAPTER XXXVII. A GREY-LIKED CLOAK. "I'm going to win!" said Hester Murray to herself, breathlessly. "Oh, I'm going to win!" For her case had been taken up by the cleverest barrister in. London, and, as he showed it to her, faultlessly dovetailed together, there was not a flaw m it. Maurice Davidge, even, who, for his own reasons, had posed this ten years back as John Davidge., was in London, and in self-defence had chosen to stand his chance for false impersonation and misappropriation of money rather than take John Davidge's sins on his shoulders.

For John Davidge's father had had excellent cause to pension off his son. A long-gone-by agrarian riot and murder in Ireland had been John Davidge's work, and by a queer chain of circumstances had come home to him now. Maurice, to save his neck, which he had ignorantly ventured in London, was glad enough to have Hester Murray corroborate his tale. And, indeed, there was no doubt about his identity. Witness after witness cropped up to establish that, and the death and burial of the true John Davidge, who had lived long enough to make Hester's marriage to Murray null and void, and died just in time to legalise her union with Levallion.

But it was queer that, as she looked at her lawyer's triumphant, confident letter, a shiver took her; the shiver old women call footsteps on your gTave. She got up and drank some brandy, nearly neat. At the bungalow she had got into the way of keeping her heart up with spirits, but she would break that off now. Yet she took another glass before her shivering-fit would pass. "It was that dream!" she said to herself. "It unstrung mc. I wish I knew what it meant. But dreams"—the •■brandy was warming her now —-''are rubbish! Only thoughts, after all." Yet that dream had made her wake up, crying out till Adrian—that Adrian who had Levallion's blood in him—came to her from the next room.

"What's the matter?" he cried, a bonny figure in the half-light, with his ruined head and his tumbled nightgown. "I dreamed I was on a swing!" She caught him to her.

"That wa-sn't anything," climbing into her bed.

'"No, of course not." But she did not telj the child her whole dream. There was she, Hester Murray, sitting on a swing that hung high over the heads of a great crowd of people. In front of her, so that as she swung, she must touch it, was a flower-covered platform. On it she saw herself—yes. her very self —inwidow's weeds, holding her boy by the hand, among a group of people who were crying: "Long live Lord Levallion!" cheering for the new heir.

The swing began to move forward, and something made her look over her shoulder. Behind her, precisely as far away as the flower-decked platform, so that as she swung back she must touch him, stood the dead Levallion, in his grave-clothes. He smiled, that smile that had cut her many a time J and pointed. At his right hand was the gallows, and a hangman with a black mask.

The swing flew through the air, touched the platform. The dreamer tried tc jump to it, and found she was tied by a cord. Back, back went the swing towards the dead man, whose outstretched hand would catch and hold it fast. Back —with a shriek of torture Hester Murray woke, and trembled at her child's touch.

"I'm a fool!" she thought, now. "It was nightmare. I had nothing to do with it. I never was in Levallion's house/ 5

• But apprehension had her by febe throat. If she had dared she would almost have thrown up her claim and her child's. But to dare that was out of her power this three weeks past.

" 1 must go out. The air may steady mc. I'm nervous." If it was not too late she would go to the hospital, for Bob Murray, by some miracle, was lingering still. Quite gratuitously his quondam wife wished he would die. Not that it would really matter to her case; she would be rid of him effectually when she was proved to be the Countess of Levallion, but if he died quietly, he would not be able to air some small details that shed no glory on her life in Eaton Place. He might deny Levallion's going there till he was black in the face, no,one would believe him. And still she wished feverishly that he was dead.

But she was too late at the hospital, or too something. The hall porter informed her that the house-surgeon was busy at an operation, and—having vainly expected a tip at her previous visits could get her no information on the case she Inquired about, except that the man was alive.

Mrs. Murray walked slowly toward Rfibent-street, that the lights and the crowd might cheer her. At Berry's she went in and had dinner, with reckless extravagance. There was nothing to go home for to-night, and it would pas 3 the time.

It had been five o'clock when she started; it was nearer ten than nine when she got back to Starr-street, her causeless apprehension utterly gone, and her small, dainty face quite gay.

■' A gentleman is waiting to see you, madam! " The landlady was in the entry as Mrs. Murray"s latch-key let her (in. Thare was no secret about her being the Mrs. Murray whose case had electrified London, and the future Countess of Levallion had everything she chose to ask for in the squalid lodgings.

"What gentelman?" The door halfclosed, the latchkey half-way to her pocket, Hester stood. " I couldn't say. I think he was here yesterday," "Oh, yes!" with a little relieved, ■laugh. "My lawyer." And she went into" the sitting-room with her oddly boyish step suitably adjusted to smoothness. The door slipped from her hand and banged. A tall man, clean-shaven, except for a heavy dark mous'»aehe, was pacing irritably up and down the room. His plain blue serge was exquisitely cut, but oddly narrow in the chest, as if it had been made for some other man.

" How dare you come here ? " she said, her clear voice low with fury. " It's enough to ruin mc."

He shrugged his shoulders. " You talk nonsense. Have I no sense? If I run. any risk it is because you were out. Did I not say," angrily, " stay in, stay in, stay in? " His upljited hand. seemd to -iajeaten her, for

she cowered under it. "For you, there is no risk at all."

" You said last night you could not come again. That there was risk! " As she looked at him her dream came back to her, though he had not been in it, and her voice came back harsh and sudden.

" What brings you, and where have you been ?"'

His hand fell on her slight shoulder.

'"Last night was last night!" he said. " It's none of your business where I've been, but I don't mind telling you. Down at Levallion."

" Well," she said, as if it -were no news to her.

" If I had not gone it would not have been well—for you," he said. '-Though I don't know. Did you do " —curiously —"what I told you to?" " I couldn't," carelessly. " I've had no chance."

"What! " savagely. "I couldn't do it in daylight! " she cried. " I don't see how I can do it at all. If that's •what you mean, you were a fool to come here!* The thing is safer here than anywhere; it doesn't matter in any case."

" Get it! " ordered the man, and his face had grown ten years older. Since you can't make yourself safe, I must. Go! "

" I won't do anything in the dark," she said. "How do I know what you want it for—other people may trust you, I don't."

His hands opened and shut, as if for one second it was hard work to keep them off her, though he loved her in his way.

"You can trust me—better than yourself," he said, close to her ear. "Listen! I went down to Levallion. I told you I should not. but I did. And there in broad daylight, with a field-glass, I see Captain Gordon appear—that black little beast, Sir Thomas; the lawyer. I have no field-glass for my ears, I cannot make them like mv eyes. But "

"They'd nothing of yours?" she gasped. "No," softly, but his nails were hurting her shoulder. "But they had of yours. Had you no sense—did you not know that accursed dog tore your cloak that night in the wood?"

"I never looked at it!" she said wildly.

"Look now, then; for they had a piece of it in their hands. May the devil bum them for not showing it at the inquest! Fd' have—and now you've got it still! Even though I told you to take no chances, to get rid of it if you had to burn this house down."

"They can't think of mc," hardly. "1 was in Boulogne."

'"How do I know whom they think of?" with sudden fury. "They have gone back for some reason to the woman they could not trace. I hear from people that all this time Captain Gordon has been in London. What brought him back to-day to look at that black-and-gray rag? If I had not gone down, the police might harp fitted it to your cloak."

"How dared you come, with Gordon there?" she broke in furiously. "You should have watched him. He "

"He is there, and not here—that is why I came." And as if her slowness, her distrust, maddened him, he shook her viciously. "Get the cloak" he cried, "and I'll save you yet. The police may be on you to-morrow. You will onJy have mc and my field-glass to thank if they do not find it."

"If they do, I didn't dv—it," she said, and then ran, for his eyes were full of murder.

"Take it!" she gasped, coming back again, throwing clown a black satin cloak, lined with chinchilla. "I wish I'd never seen you!"

"I daresay you do—Lady Levallion!" he said sardonically. '"Hester Murray told another story. Good night, and thank mc you dare to sleep."

But when he was gone she had no thought of sleep. For two days she had loved the man who had just gone out; and now she hated' him, because she knew she would never get rid of him till she died. She ran to the window to see where he had gone; stared out; dropped the half-raised blind and staggered, more than started back to the middle of the room, as if the quiet street had been the pit of hell.

"The dream!" she thought wildly. "But I've time!" Something took her at the throat. The man held everything in his hands, her money, her position, her — But it was not being Countess of Levallion that was in her thoughts as she ran from the room, but life—bare life—that garbled lie could take away from her. (To be continued daily.)